Wake me up when Montreal/Washington does something good, will you?

[nickgutierrez]

Jim Bowden should not be running a major league franchise. Take, for instance, his recent trade for Angels' RF Jose Guillen, for whom he gave up Juan Rivera and an unnamed prospect. I'll here list two sets of statistics, try and see if you can tell me who Juan Rivera is, and who Jose Guillen is.

Name BA/OBP/SLG

Player A: .307/.364/.465
Player B: .294/.352/.497

To me, it doesn't really matter much. Neither of these players is significantly better than the other, and trading one of them and a prospect for the other is a bad deal. Now, player B is two years older than player A (28-26), and significantly more expensive ($312,000 to $2,200,000).

Player A is Juan Rivera. Yes, Jose Guillen has "character issues", is a "clubhouse problem", and quite possibly several other things, but the main case against this trade has nothing to do with any of these things: Guillen is the inferior player, when you consider things like age and salary, and pulling off this deal is a major coup for Angels management.

And there is also the issue of the twin evils unleashed back on the 16th of November, Vinny Castilla and Cristian Guzman. Castilla signed a two year contract worth $6.2m. His value was pretty clearly inflated by leading the NL in RBIs last year in a season that was pretty clearly out of line with the rest of his career. Check this out, though: his OBP away from Coors Field last season was .288. Not his batting average, his OBP. That means that 72% of the time he comes up to the plate, outside of the best hitter's park in baseball history, he made an out. If he maintanes that pace, and gets 600 ABs, you can expect something in the area of 427 outs next season. That's worth three million a year, isn't it?

How do you sign 427 outs a season to a two year deal, and do worse? Simple: Cristian Guzman signed a four-year contract worth $16.8m. Guzman is a decent defensive shortstop who couldn't find first base with two hands and a flashlight. In the era of the shortstop who can hit and field, Guzman can't hit. Aside from what appears to be a fluke of a 2001 season, Guzman hasn't had an OBP above .315, or a SLG above .385. You have to do one of these things, at the very least, to be a good offensive player (and a free agent worth $4.2 million a year), and he does neither.

For a team without a home, and without a name, this is not a good sign.

(I'm releasing an edited version of this to a website or two, tell me what you think. :) )